~ A site for my creative writing endeavors, writing prompt responses, and experimentation.

The Self-Impeachment of the Republican Party

On January 21, 2020, the Republican Party begins the process of impeaching itself. Sure, the guy in the White House is the official subject of the impeachment trial, but it is the Republican Party itself that is under indictment.

Not surprisingly, Mitch McConnell, the most corrupt, most Anti-American Senate Majority Leader in history, is doing his best to cover up what has been shown as blatant abuse of power, obstruction of justice, treason, and self-dealing corruption. McConnell is actively working to destroy any semblance of a trial, never mind a fair one. He’s blocked witnesses, blocked time to present the case, and blocked media access so that Fox News and other Goebbels-style propaganda outlets can lie to Republican constitutes.

This isn’t a revelation given McConnell’s long history of self-dealing. He has violated his oath of office so many times in the last 10 years that it comes as no surprise that he openly and gleefully violates the oath he just took to be “an impartial juror” in the impeachment. The oath and responsibility that the Constitution dictates he follow. His mockery of the Constitution and honest play is infamous and well documented. The shear audacity of McConnell’s dishonesty and subterfuge would have resulted in him being thrown out of office by his own party in days when the Republican Party at least made the attempt to be honest. Sadly, the Republican Party has become the Know-Nothing party, built on racism and relying on blatant lying on every issue and action. Every. Single. One. Documented.

So while the traitorous acts of the White House are under indictment, so too is the Republican Party. And it is demonstrating its guilt every day.

But there is still a chance. Right? People who identify as Republicans could stand up to the abyssal corruption of the party’s leaders. Right? That’s what my Republican friends tell me.

I haven’t seen it. I see otherwise honest people instead look the other way. They rationalize that their ideological benefits somehow outweigh the destruction of the Constitution and the institutions formerly known as the three co-equal branches of government. Actions they saw as traitorous in Obama (even if they made up most of them) they now see as “a unique style” in their own leaders. Worse, they have immersed themselves in such a fantasyland of the surreal for so many years that they actually have begun to believe their falsehoods are somehow true. They aren’t.

Ah, but you can see that Republicans do know that they are protecting corruption. Their social media feeds go radio-silent whenever the evidence shows “their guy” (in reality, their entire Party structure) is guilty as charged, and more. They don’t try to defend what they know is indefensible, the kind of things they would have been screaming pitchforks in the street if Obama had done it. Instead they hide and deflect. Suddenly their feeds are all about “what movie character are you?” or some other completely unrelated topic. They know they are hiding from the truth, and it reflects who they are more than any other one thing.

My Republican friends tell me they are conservative. But they aren’t. Their every action proves that they aren’t really conservative at all. If they were, they would speak up against the profligate corruption of their own party. They would speak up against Mitch McConnell blocking the workings of Congress. They would speak up when McConnell blocks bipartisan legislation designed to protect the attack on our nation’s electoral system by foreign parties. But they don’t. Republicans should be speaking up against their own leaders’ destruction of American institutions…their own leaders’ attacks on American workers, on American business, on American principles. But they don’t.

My Republican friends tell me they are conservative. But their actions prove that isn’t true. When several foreign powers bribed their leaders, they made excuses for it. When other foreign powers bribed us to the brink of war, they made excuses for it. When their leaders started a trade war solely because of ego, and then “fixed” it by bribing farmers and then getting absolutely nothing in return after giving up, they made excuses for it. When their leaders’ threw out conservative principles for political expediency, they made excuses for it. You can’t call yourself a conservative when the only “conservative” values you fight for are redistribution of wealth to the smallest number of people, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and corruption, all at the expense of 95%+ of the American people. All of this is documented. Look at what McConnell and Company have done with their time, including when they owned both Houses and the White House. Everything they did benefited the very few while destroying protections and the future for the rest of America.

Making excuses for corruption, incompetence, treason, and an average of 22 blatant lies per day every day of this administration isn’t being conservative (and that is only one person; it doesn’t even count the lies of McConnell and the mafia pack that has blasphemed the word conservative on the Republican side of the House). Defending blatant dishonesty isn’t being conservative. It’s being Anti-American. And I know all my Republican friends would admit it if you looked at it with an honest eye, an open mind, and strong faith.

My Republican friends tell me they aren’t like that. They aren’t dishonest. They aren’t Anti-American. All I ask is that you prove it. Act like it. Don’t be the party that cozies up to Nazis. Don’t be the party that makes a comfortable home for white supremacists and the KKK. Don’t be the party that lies in every breath about everything – big and small. And they do. Documented. Don’t be the party of dishonesty. It’s time to do some soul searching and be honest with yourselves and your families.*

We cannot escape history. Republicans cannot escape history. The choices you make now will define you forever. Your children, your grandchildren, your family, your friends–everyone–will remember the choice you made today. The Republican Party is impeaching itself today. You don’t have to. Stand up for the nation you tell me you cherish.

*And yes, I’ve done that soul searching. And no, I am not a Democrat. I consider myself an honest American who has faith in the Constitution and the strength of this nation’s institutions, a faith that has been sorely tested this last decade. As a scientist and historian I’ve spent my lifetime evaluating information, parsing bits of data for its veracity and contextual meaning. I don’t claim to be anything but human, with human faults and human perceptions. But this isn’t hard. The data are unequivocal. We see it every day. We just have to listen to it instead of dismissing it because it doesn’t jive with our ideology or expediency. I’ve made my choice to speak up because I don’t want to be like the person who said “I didn’t know” as Hitler was openly and actively gassing millions of people. Being American means taking responsibility for how our country works. Which means doing what is right. It’s time to “stand with anybody who stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right, and PART with him when he goes wrong.”

Letters from me to senators and representatives are limited to once a year, regardless of how exasperated I might feel. But my theme this year was that the upcoming proceedings are a test for them. Nonetheless, the responses from my Republican senators are obtuse without exception.

I remember having a bit of time in graduate school to watch the Iran-Contra hearings and being very saddened.

I also remember learning to draw faces with pencil and paper while watching Sam Ervin’s face on a black-and-white TV. My subsequent letter to Howard Baker was opened by a family acquaintance doing a summer internship in his office; that taught me a little.

The upshot is that we are at a cusp, and the results are uncertain. Writing letters is perhaps small potatoes, but it is something we can all do.

Likely your senator never saw you letter, protected from controversy by a firewall of aides and form letters sent out under autopen signatures.

Iran-Contra showed me how dishonest an ideology can become.

Yes, it does seem we are on a cusp, but the results seem all too uncertain. Unless Kentucky, Maine, Arizona, Nevada and a few other places show they have the integrity to right the ship, the current McConnell destruction of the Senate will be the norm for decades, or perhaps all time.

I actually got a phone call back from one-term Rep Gwen Graham’s office a few years ago. Then arranged another call. In retrospect, she was probably actively looking for issues to champion as a new representative. It was heartening to know that they listened, but discouraging that they were rather clueless. Just eager.

I suppose freshman congresspeople need to be more proactive than those who are settled into multiple terms. And cluelessness isn’t uncommon. Some of the Representatives and Senators I’ve met over the years (especially the Representatives) are so smarmy that I feel the need to bathe afterwards; others seem incredibly, well, stupid, and I have trouble imagining how they managed to convince enough people that they weren’t, well, stupid, such that they could be elected.

Lincoln was a one-term Congressman, in part because there was a sort of deal of alternating Representatives from his district (the guy who was supposed to replace him lost). But also because Lincoln wasn’t afraid to stand up for principles he thought were right – questioning the dishonesty of the Democratic President’s decision to start a war on false pretense, and trying to end slavery in the District of Columbia.

It’s too bad being honest isn’t a trait more often supported by voters.

My last shredder-fest included a folder full of response letters from our recently-deposed Republican senator, who is actually an old family friend through my mom. A genuinely decent person, I believe. Nevertheless, all those responses seemed to me to reflect the shallow public rhetoric of a sort of practical, political self-preservation. Regardless of one’s perhaps unstated intent, whether Republican or Democrat, staying in office (especially as a senator) requires balancing the pragmatic aspects of party financial support with the public appeal also demanded of a democracy.

I don’t want to take the bait on this one. Trump’s just enough of an ignorant narcissist to have gotten caught doing just what so many before him have had the intellectual capacity to keep rather better concealed, or at least un-provable (Al Gore, perhaps notwithstanding). I’m actually more interested in how it all works behind the scenes as opposed to the soap opera being presented to the public. Actual governance happens in a more opaque and compromising manner.

In the last temporary “spending budget” passed overwhelmingly by both parties and signed by the president on 11-21-19, just section-7 of 8, titled “Other Matters”, constitutes 10-pages of the 26-page document which includes 4-pages of contents, explanations and references.

I didn’t see any changing of “Resolved” to “towit”, (maybe in the recent House War-Powers “resolution” stunt), but there’s some interesting text extending waaay down to page 25, including the “repeal of rescission” of a $305-billion Obama-era program, and a further extension of the Patriot Act. But who reads budgets? I’m sure even Lincoln had to deal with the same kinds of things… trying to change the momentum of an institutional battleship by engaging in much pragmatic, back-room negotiating… all the while being careful not to offend either his own or others’ bases.

I’ve lived in the DC area long enough to know that self-preservation is the number one goal of every elected official, which means voting as the party leadership demands on most issues (as both parties do). I noted to estebang above that most letters in never reach the Senator/Representative/Mayor/President and responses are meaningless boilerplate designed to shut up the constituent while conning them into being proud of “a letter from my Senator.” While I despise this practice, I’m cognizant that it is part of the game and accept there is nothing that will change it.

I’m not really the kind of person who deals in hypotheticals and I’ve seen enough to know that while “both sides do it” sometimes has merit, it in fact doesn’t have any merit at all. Neither does the “everyone does it but Trump is so stupid he just got caught and they didn’t.” The fact is that while there is some spongy activity by both sides, and that the Democratic party was once blatantly corrupt, the Republican party has institutionalized dishonesty and corruption in our current era. Estebang’s mention of Iran-Contra reminds me that the Reagan administration wasn’t any less corrupt than the current one; the only difference is that the current one now has a Senate leader who is even more Anti-American than he is, as proven by his actions over the last decade (and possibly before). All documented, on TV, video, social media, and McConnell’s own bragging to his big donor voters about how he’s screwed America to their (and his) benefit, all like it’s a game to see who can make the most money while lying to their constituents.

No one reads budgets, including the people who vote on them. Reps and Senators, with a few exceptions, vote the way they are told. I don’t expect most of them to get into the weeds of budgeting, just like I don’t expect most workers to get into the weeds of corporate budgeting. It would be nice if the process were honest, but again, I’ve worked with enough corporations and lobbying organizations to know that it is they who write the budgets (most successfully, the defense industry, who have the spread to stick projects into every congressional district in America, not that that would be a form of bribery or anything).

As for Lincoln, he took office at a time before regular income taxes existed, and had to fight a war from the bottom of an ever deepening hole (with all Chase’s faults, he managed to keep the country afloat financially, albeit by creating a huge debt). I would say his case was different in that the nature of the institutional battleship was different. The executive branch had little power so Congress was the slow-turning vessel. In fact, it only started making massive changes once the slaveholding states seceded themselves out of the Union (i.e., got out of the nation’s way so it could progress).

Which is exactly what has to happen now. The same people who tried to destroy the nation then are the people who are trying to destroy it now. And only their removal – this time by being voted into office – can the nation survive.

Regarding those letters, offices do at least keep a sort of tally of where their writing constituents stand, and whether or not they represent a perspective issued from a possible lost (or gained) vote. One of those paid political advisers (retired at the time) once explained how they plotted a sort of bell-curve upon which to place the value of voter feedback.

At both ends were people they didn’t bother to consider: either die-hard party-line voters from whom you’d get a vote no matter what, or the converse. The part of the “democratic” process that garnered the most attention was thus skewed toward the proximal middle. And since these are people least likely to write letters, each letter had a disproportionate influence on at least public policy. But he also noted that the feedback system fails when the middle of the curve entirely loses interest, or when the curve becomes bi-modal.

Ever since hearing that, I’d always made sure to make it clear in letters to our last Republican senator that I presented a sympathetic, but somewhat disappointed voice. Subsequent to Trump’s election and our senator’s cessation of public appearances, that seemed to result in several calls from his office asking me to take part in closed-group conferences with him (read: “market research”).

I’ll add here that I didn’t hold our earlier Republican senator in such high regard. He was a worthless, self-serving idiot (observe that I too can have strong opinions), and his resignation wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone who knew him. As for our current district representative… “smarmy”… yeah. Definitely some serious marketing going on there.

I read budgets because that’s how I worked the system when I was younger, especially that of the defense industry. Digging carefully through defense (and infrastructure) budgets is extraordinarily revealing. And it’s why I also strongly disagree with the assertion that Democrats are somehow less nepotistic, self-serving, or beholden to their back-room dealings. (This is the whole function of that ludicrously-paid American-style corporate CEO, and why the Japanese won’t tolerate it.) The only difference between the two parties functionally (with a few frankly WTF exceptions) is to which side of the rhetorical curve they appeal for identity votes. Where the rubber hits the road, everyone moves (more or less) together.

As for the impeachment, I know you won’t agree with my take on things. But over the last few years, I think some party elite have become disturbed that someone’s not sticking to the play-book, and there’s been a gradually escalating tit-for-tat going on. I’d be more interested in the “impeachment” if an exhaustive list of tangential “witnesses” were allowed. But then I suspect we’d need to be ready to elect an entirely new government.

I always appreciate your perspective, and have actually made it a goal this year to (continue to) try to understand perspectives different than my own. I’m actually sure we would agree on most things, and I don’t disagree with most of what you said. I’m not sure I understand your comment about “party elite have become disturbed that someone’s not sticking to the play-book.” My concern isn’t that the normal playbook isn’t being followed, it’s that the playbook created by the Republican party beginning somewhere around the Reagan era and reaching a crescendo when it became likely that Obama would win looks almost exactly like the playbook used by the Democratic party prior to and after the Civil War. Then, as now, we have one party trying to hold the nation together while the other party puts all its efforts into destroying it so that the elitist few can gain all the benefit of our common country.

As for the impeachment, the Republican party again has taken the path of covering up corruption and treason and no one on the planet doesn’t understand this point. Witnesses won’t help because the Republican party decided on day one that it would overlook everything in order to stack the bench with right wing judges, many of whom the ABA has deemed unfit to clerk, never mind sit, on the bench. That and tax cuts for the rich are the only two things the party has even attempted to accomplish in three years, not counting of course its efforts to take away health care from millions of people for no other reason than to screw Obama. The actions of the party when it has held power (and when it hasn’t) all clearly demonstrate its sole purpose.

That’s the attitude that bothers me. We’ve always had political gamesmanship; I’m not naïve to it and I’m far from being an idealist. But this is outright fraud and treason – and Anti-Americanism – that rivals anything the Democrats did back when they were the “conservatives.”

Again, IMHO.

Also, I see your actions and appreciate what you’re doing, even if we might (or might not) disagree on the details. I’m not asking anyone to stop being conservative (in the honest sense) or Republican or become a Democrat. I wouldn’t become a Democrat any more than I would become a Republican these days, but I’ll vote for the Democrat until the Republican party becomes a real political party and not an Anti-American people cult.

I’d be interested, for a few minutes at least, in reading about how sociologists would define “smarminess”. It can be an intense thing. Communications style is probably a big part of it. However, that does not excuse many, who are just dumb or dishonest.

I’m sure it’s subjective, defined by each person within their realm of experience and perception. In one recent example for me, I met two US Congressmen, one from each party, who had sponsored a bipartisan resolution. One was all handsy and felt fake in his interactions (he’s my best buddy even though we hadn’t met in person before, wearing an expensive suit, and surrounded by an aura of entitlement) while the other was simply a normal(ish) guy in a normal nice suit with a casual respectful ease of interaction. Admittedly, my perceptions likely colored my interpretation, but with no expectations ahead of time one clearly seemed like he was engaged in a con game while the other just as clearly seemed to actually believe in what he was doing. It wasn’t the first time I’ve come away with such perceptions in similar circumstances. Same happened in my business life; some clients/enviro groups/corporate principles or lobbyists gave me an oily feeling while others gave me a sense of confidence in their integrity even when we were disagreeing on the path forward.

I suppose I grew up in an atmosphere of genuineness and the sense that someone is not being genuine is what makes me think they are “smarmy.”

I went to respond to a claim of negligent road maintenance in our rural, self-maintained community a couple of years ago. I was greeted well, but It was clear that the person involved thought I was at least unacceptable if not smarmy. I could speculate as to why..perhaps vocabulary and accent and speech speed. Granted the person was exceptionally rude and in emotional distress.

Probably folks that work successfully in sales/customer service develop a persona and a sensitivity to somewhat imperceptible feedback that work. Nonetheless there are a lot that don’t.

The proverbial “used car salesman” does likely epitomize the concept of smarmy, although I’ve dealt with more such salesmen and women who were genuine (if not pushy) without coming off as smarmy to me. And of course there were those who were exemplars of smarminess. Having to be “on” socially is part of being a salesperson or politician, but again, some exude genuineness while others oiliness.

I’ll add to this that it’s one who uses an expression of over-the-top agreement and “understanding” with what you’re saying, but who you know will screw you regardless. It’s a sleazy way of disarming the worthy reasoning of an opponent. Both our current Republican representative, now retired Democratic senator, and (as much as I hate to say this) President Obama once used this strategy on the same issue (the National Defense Authorization Act, or “NDAA”), predictably taking advantage of the US media’s 2-week attention span. But as I said previously, everyone moved in lock-step and the law was simply hidden within the text of a “budget” once the public was distracted by some other hand-waving.

Being oblivious to social feedback is somewhat related to excessive familiarity or ingratiation. Not necessarily smarmy. Maybe a kind of awkwardness that a lot of successful people have, that lets them get through the noise by simply ignoring it.